Category Archives: Indonesia

Yofie Setiawan, one of the leaders of the Mozilla Indonesia community in Jakarta, has a great blog post covering the recent Compfest 2011 event where the Mozilla Indonesia community’s efforts won Best Booth! Congratulations to the Indonesia community!

At last day we are nominated as the CRAZIEST booth. They call us crazy actually it’s kinda like the most cheerful, happy, and friendly booth. And at the final day, there’s no exhibition anymore, but the commitee ask some person from Mozilla can come at the closing day. At first I have another important thing to do, but when the commitee said that we are winning the BEST booth at Compfest 2011, I cancel my plan behind, I ride my motorbike at topspeed to the closing event, and running till get sweat to the stage. And fortunately I get there on time! Really like last seconds, the time when the host ready to calls Mozilla up to the stage to take the awards as the BEST booth at the Compfest 2011 Exhibition. We are really happy and proud of it! We’re not planning to grab any awards at first. Our mission is to present Mozilla at the event. And we would love to do it again on any other chances.

On September 27th, Mitchell Baker visited Jakarta for a number of media interviews and a community gathering organized by Viking Karwur.

This was the first time Mitchell had visited Indonesia for Mozilla, and as such there was high demand to interview her, not only because of the success of Firefox globally, but also because Firefox enjoys a commanding market share in the Indonesian Internet market.

Mitchell started out with an interview at MetroTV with Timothy Marbun. We had originally hoped for Mitchell to get onto MetroTV’s morning news show, Indonesia Now, however, her plane was delayed and she missed the live taping window.

After the interviews, we moved on to the community gathering. We had almost 170 people registered to attend and we were concerned about overcrowding because the venue was smaller than this number, but due to very heavy rains in Jakarta that evening a number of people who had planned to attend could not. Still we had well over 100 enthusiastic attendees, including a number of old friends from my May trip.

The community meetup was a chance to make a number of announcements including,
– the winner of the mascot naming contest; ‘Kumi’ is the Indonesian Firefox mascot’s name.

– the announcement that Mozilla will partner with Pesta Blogger 2010 and Gen Kanai and William Quiviger from Mozilla will participate;

Cake made by a friend of the Indonesian Firefox localizer Romi Hardiyanto AND the papercraft ‘Kumi fox’ mascot of the Mozilla Indonesia community.

We will be distributing the papercraft doll via PDF asap from the Mozilla Indonesia community site so you can print and make your own.

Mitchell and Viking Karwur

Thank you to Viking and Romi and everyone else who helped make this first official Mozilla event a big success. We’ll be back for PestaBlogger and are actively considering what to do for 2010 and beyond.

I spent a week in Jakarta in late May, starting to learn about the Indonesian web/Internet market. I had planned to go to Indonesia in 2009 but my schedule prevented it and in hindsight, I wish that I had gone sooner.

It’s clear that as of this year, 2010, the Indonesian Internet/web market is exploding, most obviously with Yahoo!’s acquisition of the Indonesian startup Koprol.com, but also further movements that have been less visible such as non-Indonesian venture capital firms moving into the country and starting to make their first investments.

Mozilla and Firefox are in uncharted territory in Indonesia because we enjoy being the dominant browser. Firefox’s share on many of the top Indonesian websites is between 65-75%. It’s not clear exactly why Firefox is so popular (I go into more detail below), but I believe Mozilla needs to be more active in Indonesia moving forward in order to keep the market share that we have today, and to understand why Firefox is as popular as it is for both the Indonesian market as well as other emerging markets (other parts of S. E. Asia and S. America at the very least.)

With respect to the size of the Internet and Internet users in Indonesia, I was given wildly varying figures between 25 and 40 Mil. users. I think that no one really knows for sure but whatever the exact figure is, it is clear that not even 20% of the population of Indonesia is online and with 26% growth of the Internet in the past year (Yahoo!/TNS) it is clear that there will be significant growth of Internet users in Indonesia for many years to come.

Background on the Indonesian Internet

Of the first wave of Indonesian Internet sites, which enjoy dominance in Indonesia today, the ones to note are

* Kaskus.us (the leading forum and web community)
* Detik.com (a leading online-only news service)
* Kompas.com (a portal affiliated with a major media publisher and one of the leading newspapers)
* Vivanews.com (another leading publisher and online news service)
* Plasa.com (originally a web community, retooled to be a commerce site, owned by a large Indonesian media firm)

These were either bootstrapped sites early on which got popular or sites developed with the backing of a major Indonesian media or telecom entity.

In fact many Indonesians only sign up for a webmail account in order to reigster at Facebook- i.e. for many Indonesians, Facebook _is_ the Internet of Indonesia.

Status of Mozilla in Indonesia

As far as I can tell, after speaking with a number of the top websites and web services in Indonesia, Firefox enjoys something between 65-75% market share on the desktop. Based on Mozilla’s own data, Indonesia is consistently in the top 10 of top locations for Firefox worldwide. 80% of Indonesian Firefox users use the en-US Firefox; only 16% use the Bahasa Indonesia version of Firefox. Many Indonesian users told me that “software in Indonesian is hard to understand” and while I don’t doubt that, this is most true for the most English-fluent users. While English is taught widely, everyday conversation is in Bahasa Indonesia, and the media (newspapers, TV, radio, most websites) are also in Bahasa Indonesia. Therefore there is a growing need for a Bahasa Indonesia Firefox, especially as the Internet expands beyond the wealthy and educated to more average Indonesian users.

We have known for some time that Mozilla’s highest market share in the world is Indonesia, but we have only had guesses as to why that is the case. While I tried to pinpoint the reasons as to why Indonesia has the world’s highest market share for Firefox, none of the reasons that came up in discussions are unique to Indonesia.

Some Indonesians I spoke to told me, ‘Indonesians don’t like to pay for software’ and like many other SE Asian nations, a significant majority of computer users in Indonesia are using pirated Windows. Those users can’t easily upgrade to IE 7 or IE 8, and choose to install and use Firefox instead. However software piracy is a major issue across Asia and is not unique to Indonesia.

Others have said that it is the features and/or security, and/or speed of Firefox in comparison to IE that makes it the browser of choice for Indonesians.

Still others tell me that Internet cafe owners like to install Firefox with AdBlock in order to better manage their bandwidth. However, AdBlock is popular across the world and while many Internet users in Indonesia connect via Internet cafes, and will continue to do so as the Internet expands across the nation, those users alone can’t skew our data that far.

The closest I came to understanding why Firefox is so popular in Indonesia is trying to understand how certain technology products have become popular and why. For instance currently in Jakarta, the Blackberry is far and away the most popular smart phone in the market. But the BlackBerry’s popularity is very recent- just a few years ago it was Nokia’s phones. However due to the popularity of the qwerty keyboard and the cheapest plans such that more than 4 carriers are competing to provide the cheapest rates for BlackBerry service, and no need to pay for SMS because BBMail between BlackBerry users is free, RIM has taken significant share of the high end of the smart phone market in Indonesia. I think the reason Blackberry is popular in Indonesia right, and indeed how certain technology products are virally promoted within Indonesia, holds the reason as to why Firefox is so popular in Indonesia.

Government stance on OSS

I was able to get a meeting with the Deputy Director of Software for the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology. We discussed the Indonesian government’s stance on open source software and the deputy director informed me that the ICT Ministry is actively promoting both OSS (including both Firefox and Thunderbird) within the government but also is actively promoting programs around open content as well. The day I visited the ICT Ministry, there was a press event around a contest that the government was co-funding around the creation of content for the Bahasa Indonesia Wikipedia.

Indonesian Internetworks

Via an introduction, I was able to meet Johar Rangkuti, chairman of IDC Indonesia, a leading data center operator. IDC Indonesia houses the (Indonesian) National Inter Connection Exchange (NiCE) popularly known as the OpenIXP. This is the only carrier neutral data center in Indonesia and as such all of the 200+ ISPs in Indonesia peer at IDC. What this also means is that this one physical location is also a single point of failure for the Internet within Indonesia. If the big Cisco switch that all of the Indonesian ISPs peer at IDC Indonesia goes down, the entire Internet in Indonesia goes down. It works for them but it is certainly a sight to behold. Johar was kind enough to agree to host a new mirror for Mozilla at IDC, which is now available at http://mozilla.the.net.id/ As the founder of the OpenIXP and the host that houses this key piece of Internet infrastructure in Indonesia, Johar is in fact a very influential person with respect to the Internet in Indonesia. Luckily for us he is a big Mozilla fan.

Community

Romi Hardiyanto, who has been our Bahasa Indonesian localizer since before 1.0 should be credited for the bulk of the work that has been done to develop a Mozilla community in Indonesia. We have an active mailing list and the community gets together usually once or twice a year, normally for release parties.

As Romi does not live in Jakarta (he was based in Germany studying for his advanced degree for many years) Viking Karwur, a freelance web designer based in Jakarta has been the defacto community leader. Viking has organized the release parties for Firefox for a number of years and was kind enough to help organize the community event for when I visited in May.

While we do have a small and active community in place, considering the market share that Firefox enjoys in Indonesia, and the growth of the Internet overall, my sense is that that the community could be much larger and more active.

A free press

One of the key differentiating factors for Indonesia currently that is not obvious at first is that today Indonesians enjoy free speech online. This is important because in Asia, free speech is not as common as we might hope. China, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia and Australia among others all censor the media or the Internet to one degree or another. Indonesian lawmakers have recently stated a desire to start filtering certain content from the Indonesian Internet, but for the time being Indonesia enjoys free speech, which has meant a huge boom in the popularity of weblogs and more importantly Facebook which has become an absolute must-have service in Indonesia from teenager to grand parent.

Some reports show that Indonesian is the #3 country in Facebook (after the US and the UK) and is clearly the most popular Asian language (mainly because other Asian markets either restrict access to Facebook (China, Vietnam in places) or are markets where there are domestic equivalents such that Facebook is not popular (Japan, Korea).

Competition

If we consider the fact that a majority of browser users in Indonesia use Firefox, there is logic to say that there is no need to focus on Indonesia- that Firefox has ‘won.’ I would disagree and would say that I think that our current situation in Indonesia is something serendipitous and that we could have our leading position taken away from us.

In discussions with Indonesians in the Internet and online advertising industries, it is clear that Google is exploring the market seriously in order to launch a number of key properties in country, including Maps and Chrome. Indonesian ad agencies have been asked to pitch online and offline ad campaigns for Google Maps and Chrome browser to Google and while none have been chosen as far as anyone knows, it’s only a matter of time before Google opens and office and begins to promote Chrome and Maps and other Google properties directly in country. With the cost of offline and online advertising as low as it is, Google could certainly afford to blitz the Indonesian media with ads to promote their properties and software. The challenge then for Firefox is whether we will be able to hold onto the users that we have.

Conclusion

Due to hard work by Romi as well as Viking and the existing “id-Moz” community in Indonesia, Firefox enjoys a 60-70% market share in Indonesia. Indonesia is also the top location in Asia for Mozilla, with a larger community of users than Japan or China. As Mozilla has not traditionally been active in Indonesia, now that we have a better understanding of the market and the some of the key players, hopefully we can be more active in Indonesia in the future. We still need to learn what it is about the Indonesian market which makes it Firefox so compelling for Internet users in hopes that we can keep Firefox popular in Indonesia and take those lessons elsewhere.

Thanks

I’d like to thank Romi for all of his hard work localizing Firefox for all these years. We’ll miss you at Summit this year. I’d also like to thank Viking for all of the arrangement of the meetups both this year and in the past years. I’d also like to thank Andi ‘Belutz‘ Darmawan, who has been a kind friend and guide to the OSS communities of Indonesia. I also need to thank Enda Nasution, A-list blogger extraordinaire, for his guidance and consultation. I also must thank my good friends and Asia Society Fellows Hendra Sutandinata and Lia Sunarjo who were my guides to Jakarta.

Photos

(Above) The server racks of IDC Indonesia’s new data center are hand-painted to match the four seasons. 15 years in technology and I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

(Above) Skyline of Jakarta with many minarets visible

(Above) The ubiquitous traffic of Jakarta. Outdoor ad for the iPhone which almost no one in Indonesia uses.

(Above) The TransJakarta (local city) bus. Can anyone tell me why the entrance and exit to the bus is like 4 feet off the ground and requires an elevated platform?

In a recent post at Ken Kovash’s Blog of Metrics regarding Firefox in Latvia passing 50% market share, Indonesia was ranked at 63% market share. With such a love for Firefox, it’s also great to see that Indonesia has finally had it’s first Mozilla event last month.

I would like to take a moment to thank Romi Hardiyanto, Mozilla’s tireless Bahasa Indonesia localizer for Firefox who, in addition to localizing Firefox for Indonesians, is also working to spread Firefox farther in Indonesia. Thank you Romi!

This event would also not have happened without the support and coordination of Nur’ Aini Rakhmawati of ITS Surabaya who hosted the event. Thank you Aini-san!

Thank you also goes to Mary Colvig who provided support from Marketing/Events.

Since there has been so much interest in Add-ons in Indonesia, we would like to explore the possibility of doing a similar or related Mozilla-focused event in Jakarta later this year, after the launch of Firefox 3.5. If you would like to have a Mozilla event in Jakarta, please feel free to comment and leave your email so we can contact you. We are looking for people in Jakarta who would volunteer to help us with some of the organizational work to create such an event.

This event is open to non-ITS students. If you would like to attend, please contact me via email (see link at Spread Firefox) or please leave a comment on this blog with your email and I will forward your names to the professor.

I would like to take this moment to thank Professor Nur Aini Rakhmawati Gunawan of the IT faculty of the Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember for hosting this event and making this event happen.